Friday, May 30, 2008

Where I'm from

I have a special way of depressing my brother; sometimes, whenever we are walking past a particularly awful piece of humanity that seem populate our hometown, I whisper to him “you know wherever we go and no matter how much we achieve, we will always be FROM Northfield”.

This is what the toilets are like in Northfield; covered in blood and stolen clothes, those that are not are kicked in for giggles or shit smeared out of sheer malice. Notice the strange blue tinge in the picture? This is a blue light bulb put into all public toilets in Northfield to stop the floor from being littered with used needles and smack corpses. It also means every time you use a toilet it’s like walking into a David Lynch film.

We don’t shoot each other in Northfield, we cannot afford the bullets, knives are considered showing off, so we settle for pushing pint glasses into each other and carrying table-leg coshes like gentleman’s walking umbrellas.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Back in March I was invited to contribute to Created In Birmingham (or CrIB as all the cool kids are calling it), this being an award winning blog with a wide readership* I, naturally, shat myself, worried that I would either break it, drive readers away or get the place sued. I tried to be nice and honest and lovely, one of the first posts I wrote was a post about an event I was going to, the Surface Unsigned Festival. I in my youthful naivety liked the idea of the format and recommended it. Quite rightly I was soon took to task, some readers pointed out that Surface Unsigned were a symptom of what was wrong with the music industry and suggested I was an idiot for saying otherwise.

Feeling like a prize twat I decided to appease the readers by having a look into the “festival” and discovered the structure of it was shady to say the least. Having got hold of the Terms and Conditions given to the bands I found that amongst this shadiness was the minimum ticket condition; basically each band HAS to sell a minimum of 25 tickets to be eligible to qualify for the next round, regardless of the esoteric and frankly biased points system. The upshot of this rule is most bands have to eat shit and buy the surplus tickets themselves, with Surface leaving the bands doing nearly all the promotion themselves.

Here comes the maths now amended from my original estimation on the first on CrIB now tha the figure are in, this rule guarantees for a bill of, on average 6 act per night, for the first round of 36 nights, and each acts selling 25 tickets at £6 each, a total of £194,400. (I’m willing for someone to correct me on this, my maths is famously shite)

I illustrated the post on CrIB with quotes from this leaflet pointing out that although they say the moneys goes on essential crew and personnel; I saw little of that in evidence at the gig. Willing to admit I was wrong and doing such a extensive job of investigating, I hopefully saved some face and congratulated myself on a job well done.**

Nearly exactly two months later I received an e-mail from Surface, telling me that the Terms and Conditions pamphlet is copy written and threatening legal action if I don’t remove the quotes.

So basically if a big company doesn’t like what is written about them, they feel as if they can bully people into submission. FUCK THAT NOISE. You know at first I was angry, obviously, but now I’m more bemused, threatening me is just plain stupid, dinosaur stupid. For these reasons;

1. It’s not smart to piss of people that have; A) a public uncensored platform and B) a wide readership of your target audience2. The grounds of your legal claim being dubious at best3. Suing me would be a mistake, I have nothing to lose and notoriety to gain, if someone was to sue me for everything I own, I’m so poor they would end up owing me money.

The Surface Unsigned festival is basically a variation of an old hustle, exploiting young artists need to crack a difficult industry, taking their early fans for any money they can get in the guise of support and then leaving them on the side of the road like a Hell’s Angels’ rape victim.

If you don’t agree to Surface’s tactics or ethos let me know in the comments section – or, even better, write your own views in your own blog or website thus generating as much negative publicity for these fuckers that we can

*as compared to here that comprises of a few angry cultists, friends and a dog**Indecently I still think the format of six or seven bands in one night for a nominal price still has legs, but that is entirely beside the point.

Monday, May 12, 2008

DONT

Martin Mullaney likes, and even, encourages what he has decided is graffiti “art” but virulently campaigns against Tagging without ever realising that tagging and the more elaborate piece are part of the same movement. Doesn’t it seem weird that a person in power can pick and choose which parts of a culture are encouraged and which parts condemned? Granted, his opinion is tainted by advice given by now respectable Graff artists who, naturally, have to legitimise their position. I have no problem with these people, most are ex-taggers that now have developed their practice away from the baby steps of Tagging. What I do have a problem with is the condescending attitude and arrogance it takes to assume that a whole movement of Art needs or wants his regulation or encouragement; where just because you sees no aesthetic value in something you assume it has no value or purpose.

Lets call this what it is; a transparent attempt to appeal to the Boho/arty demographic in his chosen wards and an ugly meddling in a culture he has no part in. If you don’t like Tagging. GOOD, you’re not supposed to.

If I was the incendiary type I would encourage some sort of graffiti stencil campaign. But seeing as that is probably quite illegal I recommend that you defiantly DON’T click on this image until you can download the full A4 version and print it off, and ABSOLUTLY DON’T glue it to a piece of thin card, a cereal box for example, DON’T then get a sharp knife and cut out the black bits, and then whatever you do DON’T take the resulting stencil to somewhere public and spray those naughty spray cans pressing the edges of the stencil firmly against the wall.

if someone was to do that and send me an image i would probably post it here, as a warning of what you definatly shouldnt be doing.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Iron Man

Being a comic book nerd rarely pays off, you never really get to smugly sit back with a big I-told you-so grin, until this film. Grittier than most comic adaptations Iron Man is a corker* of a film. Robert Downey Jnr charmingly steals every scene he is in with such likeable ease I’m not sure if I want to be him, be his mate or just plain fuck him with a geek het crush so strong I had to resist the urge to sigh every time he appeared on the screen. Other notable mentions go to The Dude for carrying of a believable but menacing bad guy, not just for a comic book movie but for any movie, and Gwyneth Paltrow for making red hair look attractive. At no point in this film was I impressed with the CGI, but this is not a bad thing - I never even noticed the CGI which is how it should be, the effects seamlessly intertwined with the live action in a way that makes Titanic look as convincing as a Punch and Judy show. Although I did find the thick vein of American jingoism that runs throughout distasteful, I suppose it could be argued that Iron Man isn’t necessarily patriotic, its just that he is the ultimate extension of capitalism, which is also happens to be the principle that America is founded on. Also in some uncomfortable scenes the conflict in Afghanistan is depicted, I’m not sure I was entirely comfortable that such scenes being used as entertainment, while the conflict is still going on. But with wry additions to the script to keep the fanboys happy, and enough emotional clout to make it engaging I heartily recommend you see this film (and stay after the credits for pure nerdgasm).

Monday, April 21, 2008

Broad St

Drink up you fucker; swill it down with Viking gusto. The bubbles in your glass are escaping pockets of pure fun, so get that mess down your neck. There’s no shame in being sick, only in slowing or stopping altogether. Punish yourself; it’s been a hard week, you deserve it. Smash those drinks into your gullet, rape your wallet and bloat your liver to the size of the Duff Blimp. Laugh through your blood matted hyena muzzle while you hunt in your tight fcukshirt pack. Throw the cash you hate to earn around like confetti, just to dull the pain of a whole week of your life wasted to earn it. Dance like EVERYBODY’S watching, octopus hands flailing and pawing any warmbody that stumbles near. Pure Id freed by cheap gaudy coloured alcoshots and preening ego alpha male atmosphere. Fuck everyone, tonight you are god, the hard man, a 12inched cock swaggering gold plated, card carrying, double hard, lady killing Geeza.

But tomorrow you will be a twat, with a job you hate, a mortgage, a headache and a girlfriend that sucks your best friend off when you go play golf.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Twitter meme?

I have been thinking about Twitter a lot recently, well it’s hard not to when it has become a permanent background buzz. Tonight I will be at the Birmingham bloggers meet, I met most of the people there for the first time at the last one, but despite only meeting them once I feel as if I have known them longer. I think this is because of Ambient Intimacy, by sharing the little details of our lives, things that normally only people close to us get to find out, we ipso facto become close. It’s a little bit like the people-hacking trick where if you want someone to like you, you ask them a favour and because their mind will justify the process in retrospect they presume you’re a friend already.

But is the Twitter nonsense cloud more than that? I’m inclined to think that Twitter is becoming a shared subconscious. Like the personal Tweets we send, we are very much in control of the thoughts we have, what we are not in control of are the replies we get from the subconscious, sometimes they agree, sometimes they differ, sometimes they ignore the original thought and throw up something different entirely. Now I’m not saying that Twitter is our first baby steps towards a hive mind like that shared by the Borg (am I?), but the potential for the application, and those like it are massive.

One thing I have noticed so far is that while the practical elements and applications are still being discussed and discovered, the creative and fun aspects opportunities have not even started, witty banter aside of course. I suppose this is because the function and idea of it is still novel enough to be fun in themselves.

One idea I had originally started from the six word fiction project by Wired magazine and a developed into a internet meme, where you write a biography in six words. Six words fits the 140 character limit and I propose we start each Tweet participating with /bio/, which will make the results easier to find using Tweetscan.

About Me

while being an insomniac and fledging alcoholic writer isn't the most original thing in the world, it's a pretty accurate description. Everyone around me has started to get mortgages and babies, I have a few books, a skeleton marionette and a mind half full of rapidly decaying memory's.